


i was a heavy heart to carry

by girl0nfire



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU: Band, Alternate Universe, Community: trope_bingo, F/M, POV Second Person, Secret Relationship, implied sex work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 17:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl0nfire/pseuds/girl0nfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky takes a job playing piano in an underground burlesque club, gathering information on Axis war plans.  The owner's favorite dancer, a woman they call the Widow, manages to capture his attention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was a heavy heart to carry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninjamcgarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjamcgarrett/gifts).



In St. Petersburg, two flights below a cobblestone street lined with the ghosts of old buildings draped in new red flags, there’s a bar. The owner, Ivan, he calls it the Red Room, all brocade walls and dim lanterns, hidden corners for things that are best left unseen, and Ivan doesn’t blink when you tell him you’re AWOL, that all you want is a job. Not that any sin would matter here; it’s the type of place where powerful men, their chests full of medals, knock twice, where the drinks are strong enough to drown out the sounds of the shells shaking the last beautiful facades of the Tsar’s Russia apart, where the women are beautiful enough to make even the most heartless man forget.

Here, the women dance to the tinny sounds of a small piano, tucked away beneath a city that cannot remember its own name. They slink through crowds of empty eyes and reaching hands, their skin velvet-edged and cold to the touch, tucking the men’s worthless money into the satin wrapped around their waists and smiling their blood-red smiles, the flicker of the chandelier never quite illuminating the shadows that mar their faces.

And it’s here, hidden inside these four brick walls, where you wait. Where you watch the men who could bring this world to its knees sip vodka and smoke cigars, memorizing the way they pass messages hand-to-hand. Where you watch as evil takes its time, slipped in coat pockets and tapped out on scarred mahogany tables, orders for more death and destruction and endless darkness traded over drinks while they laugh at dirty jokes. 

So you bide your time, playing the bleak winter away at a broken-down piano, heeding Steve’s orders with one eye always open and you wait for Ivan to make his move.

+

Ivan Petrovitch is not a threatening man, his short stature and round belly betraying him for the soft, easily-fooled puppet he is. But he’s a necessary worthlessness, a man whose deeds done in the service of others is enough to garner the military’s attention. He’s a harsh man, flush with his own ideas about power, and soon you meet the women he calls his pets. He keeps them like prizes, jealously, parading them around so that others can admire his collection, but he’s not gentle. You can see that in their faces.

There’s one dancer, Ivan’s favorite, a scarlet-haired woman the other dancers speak of in whispers. They tell you she’s called the Widow, that she had a husband once, a brave man, called away to serve as a test pilot in the war who never returned. Even now, she wears her mourning veil, sheer black silk and net pinned delicately among the waves of her hair, obscuring her face as she works the room, accepting drinks from men who look at her with eyes like wolves.

They say that she never chooses a customer to entertain, that she always leaves the stage alone. They point fingers and hiss stories of missing politicians and bloodstained ivory gloves and they avert their eyes when she brushes past.

And maybe it’s true, after all. You know that Ivan’s not the leader he wants to be believed. But it’s enough. Enough to keep you here while the Commandos take leave in Switzerland, enough to give you a reason to tell the base that you just need more time.

+

Two weeks, and you’ve got the rhythm of this den memorized. You can see faces in the crowd, leering men with the blood of millions on their hands, men whose thick laughter makes your fingers itch for a trigger. Ivan traffics in flesh, attracting the worst of the men who deal in it above ground as well, liars and killers and those who have never known a fraction of the pain they cause, and he’s as bad as them all.

Every night, at midnight, she dances. Ivan waits to bring her out, knowing that she’s the one they all pay to see, plying his customers with drinks and other girls, until the crowd is frenzied, three dozen men howling like wild things, stamping their feet.  


And it will be then, and only then, that she’ll appear. You’ll start up the slow swing of a torch song, something languid and panting, a song sung in a language these men would never guess, and quietly, she’ll cross the stage. 

Heavy velvet curtains pull back, a single spotlight encircling her, and as you play, she rises like the tide, all-encompassing as she trails feathers across her skin. She twists, sequins glinting like scales at her throat as she takes the finger of one coal-black glove between her teeth, shedding the satin like skin and dangling it over her shoulder with a smirk. Your music reaches a fever pitch and she undulates, the serpentine curves of her body charming every man in the room, their eyes following her every movement as she casts her spell over them. The sway of her waist mimics the melody of your piano and she snatches each note from you with her small, delicate hands, capturing them against her skin as she slips the silk from her shoulders, her crimson-lipped smile revealing too-sharp teeth. Jewels flash as she turns slowly, her hips flowing like water over the notes spilling from the broken-down depths of your piano.

Sometimes, as she finishes, displayed like a sculpture, all porcelain skin and dark red jewels, you rush out the last bars of her song. As your fingers fly over the old ivory keys, you wonder if that’s how she could feel beneath your hands, ancient and cold and secret. She looks at you with something like sadness, gathering up her feathers and ribbons when the curtains fall, and you snap the cover closed over the keys and try desperately to forget the thought of all that skin slipping beneath your palms.

+

Ivan watches you. He snaps at the bartender to pour another drink, and he says,

“Tell me again why I shouldn’t turn you in.”

Because Ivan is watching you, and while to him you are just an AWOL soldier, looking for a small bed and a job, one day as he counts his money he will see the way your fingers fly over the keys just for her and he’ll notice.

+

Some days, she arrives early, slipping out of the cold of the city and making her way to a seat at the bar. She’ll sip tea and read books, old tomes with thick covers and gilt-edged pages, stories of knights and kingdoms and dragons. You try not to stare, as she reads, but it’s the only time you ever see her face light up. Everything she feels flashes across her face, joy, pain, apprehension, unspooling across her features as she immerses herself in worlds far away from here, worlds where beautiful women dressed in silk are prizes, warm places where lovers meet in secret.

One day, she laughs, and it’s music like you’ve never hoped to play.

+

“You’re a soldier,” she says, stepping from the stage, the curtains closed for the final time tonight. She runs a palm along the curves of your piano and her words are not a question.

Cream skin prickles in the cold air as she slips the liquid silk of her gown over her head, glancing in the cracked mirror that hangs nearby and pinning her veil in place again.

“I knew a soldier, once.”

+

You’ve lost count of days, weeks, waiting for Ivan’s friends to make their play, waiting for the show of power that will tell you the information you’re looking for is about to change hands.

She comes to you, wordless like every time she dances, and when you press kisses to the soft skin of her neck, you can see her throat work as she swallows whatever she’s refusing to say.

You never tell her your name, and she doesn’t ever ask and the next morning she’s gone, her veil left in a heap near your clothes.

+

The next night, as she slips the clasp of the deep green gown she wears, she extends a single, slim finger into the crowd and beckons to a man you recognize.  


Zola. The Red Skull’s very own scientist, the man who had you on your back on a frozen metal table, the man who did his best to take your will and break it apart in his hands.

Your fingers itch again for a trigger, watching him rise from his seat, spectacles flashing, to follow her through the velvet curtains leading up the stairs, and the keys crash together beneath your shaking hands, discord shattering the melody of her song. Shaking your head, you drop your gaze, refusing to meet Ivan’s eyes as he watches from the bar. 

She doesn’t return.

+

From then on, you don’t watch her any longer. You count out the rhythm of her song, the beating of the shells at the outskirts of the city weaving like percussion into your music, and as your hands pick carefully across the keys you wonder what falling in love with her would be like, if it would be like the children’s stories she hides in or if it would always be like giving her a blade to hold against your throat, just that fast and reckless.

Three more men, all the Red Skull’s lackeys, men you recognize from their pictures and from your time in their cages. The man who nearly broke Dugan’s jaw your first day as the Skull’s prisoners, he slips his arms around her bare waist as she leads him up the stairs. The one who directed the factory, he buys her a drink and reaches to slip her hair behind her ear, two fingers pulling his collar away from his neck as his eyes undress her.

They always slip away with her, upstairs to the rooms where no one else is allowed, and after closing, as you help the bartender wipe down the tables, Ivan follows.  


You send an encrypted message back to the base, and tell them it’s begun.

+

It’s Christmas Day, and you make your way down the stairs, jacket collar pulled up against the thick snow outside, and as you turn the corner you hear Ivan shouting. Your Russian is basic at best, but you slip your back against the doorjamb and strain your ears anyway.

_I don’t care what you want, Little Natalia. These men are powerful, they will help us._

There’s another voice, hoarse. Stripped of its music. Tired.

_Ivan, I do not care what they can do. I am not a doll for you to use in your war games._

A crack, like a blow, and you take the last stairs two at a time, skidding into the dimly lit club to see Ivan rearing back again, his open hand raised. She glares at him, unbowed, her cheek singed red. Ivan’s shouts drown out your steps as he readies to strike her again.

_You forget your place, Little Natalia. You will always be mine._

Over his shoulder, she meets your eyes, only for a moment. There’s a liquid, dark sadness in them, the same you always see when the curtain’s closed. But here, now, you can finally do something to see it fade away.

Ivan lets loose with another slap, and as she raises her arm to block him, you rush forth, gripping his neck with your hands. You think of all the powerful men you’ve watched sip drinks and profit from their own depravity and as you wrap your fingers around Ivan’s pulse you wonder if anyone would really miss this kind of man. 

Ivan sputters, dropping his fingers to claw at your grip, his nails leaving raw trails down the backs of your hands, and as he struggles, she steps forward, nearly knocking him from your grip as her fist meets his jaw. He stiffens in your grasp, his head snapping backwards and crashing against your chin before he falls limp.  


You drop him to the floor, wipe the blood from his scratches off on your slacks, spit the blood from your mouth, and when you look up, she’s studying you.  


Her English is new, still rough like young fingers on old keys, and her sea green eyes are bright when she says, “Thank you.”

Extending her hand, you reach to take it and when your fingers brush along the soft skin of her wrist you can’t help but revisit all those nights you lost to wordless touches, watching her dance and memorizing how the curves of her hips, the angles of her ribs, felt beneath your hands. 

But it’s too late for that, it’s too late for anything, except you strip off your jacket, wrapping it around her bare shoulders before she can protest.

“You should go, when he wakes he won’t be happy.”

She nods, her crimson hair tangling along the collar of your jacket and she steps over Ivan’s heavy, unconscious form gracefully. Sweeping toward the door, she stops, resting a pale hand against the frame and turning back to meet your eyes again, scarlet lips curve into an honest half-smile and she says,

“You’re a good man.”

Pulling the collar of your jacket closer, she ducks out of the doorway, her shoes barely tapping against the rickety stairs. You wait until you hear the heavy door open to the street, the bitter wind of the city racing down the streets above, to reply.

“Not really, no.”

You steal Ivan’s jacket, finding a half-dozen false passports and a notebook filled with symbols inside. The Commandos are waiting for you, a hundred miles east of here, and you’ve got two days to bring them the information you’ve gathered.

Just enough time to let the winter burn her fingerprints from your skin.

+

**Author's Note:**

> Written in a fit of angsty pique after Winter Soldier #14, and for my trope bingo square "AU: Band", title from Florence + The Machine's "Heavy in Your Arms".


End file.
